Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

06.28.16 Icelandic Lessons: Reflections on the Youth System that Produced a Triumph

Even before Iceland took the Euros by storm, miraculously qualifying from group F (above Portugal and Austria), and then stunning England yesterday in the round of 16, they were the story of the tournament. With a population of 330,000 or roughly that of Bakersfield, California, their qualification was considered a minor miracle. This caused journalist Jonathan…


06.24.16 Competence and Trust, Part II–A Guest Post From Dan Cotton

This is the second of three posts by my colleague Dan Cotton that’s based on a series of conversations we’ve had about the nature of relationships in the classroom.  The first post appears here.   Dan writes: Consider this brief moment from outstanding high school English teacher Beth Verrilli’s classroom: Her students are reading Macbeth. They’re…


06.21.16 Tracking, Not Watching: A Field Guide 2.0 Excerpt

One of the most important skills for any teacher or coach is observing during independent practice. It’s one of the keys to Checking for Understanding. Joaquin Hernandez, Jen Kim and I put some new framing on this critical topic in the 2.0 version of the Teach Like a Champion Field Guide, which comes out in September. …


05.25.16 “We spend hours, sometimes, thinking about our words”

Last week I posted a very short clip of a famous soccer/football coach, Dick Bate, running a training session. In it you can see that he has carefully planned the words he will use to describe the concept he is teaching.  And he uses those words every time.  Because he has planned the phrase to go…


05.19.16 10 Seconds with an Elite Soccer/Football Coach

I’ve been writing a lot of “10 seconds in…” posts lately.  The idea is to watch just ten seconds of a teacher in action (like here and here). Close study of just a few seconds in a top classroom can yield a bunch of useful takeaways. I kind of stumbled on to the idea, but it’s…